Apple Acquires Silicon Grail 214
mac writes "Silicon Grail's web site has an interesting update: it has been acquired by Apple. Their product RAYZ and Nothing Real's Shake are the two major products, as far as compositing software goes. Nothing Real was bought by Apple also back in February. With both companies held by Apple, who will fill the void in the Windows and Linux?"
Monty Python (perl?) (Score:4, Funny)
What... is your quest!? To buy the Silicon Grail.
What... is the average performance of a Dual G4 when compared to an Intel Pentium 4? What, Rambus, or DDR powered?
I don't know that... AAAAAAAAARGHHH!H
What is it? (Score:3, Informative)
Better writeups, please.
Redundant (Score:3, Funny)
What Void for Windows? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:What Void for Windows? (Score:1)
The closest (consumer) competitior would be Adobe After Effects.
Competing products (Score:3, Interesting)
Though, truth be told, Discreet did recently shut down their entire Combustion development office...
Re:Competing products (Score:2)
More likely, IMHO, is that Combustion gets a few minor updates, then is quietly phased out in favour of Toxic, which Discreet is hard at work on.
BTW, if I may ask, where do you work? How are you reacting to the Shake situation? What about Shake do you find is important to your work?
Re:What Void for Windows? (Score:5, Insightful)
Those OSS projects are to video editing what the GiMP is to Photoshop. I think you'd better keep looking.
Don't get me wrong, I like GiMP, but I don't think you'd want to use something with it's level of polish for professional projects, which is the segment Apple is after.
Re:What Void for Windows? (Score:2)
Re:What Void for Windows? (Score:3, Informative)
What Void for Linux? (Score:2, Informative)
``Apple has declared that Irix and Linux versions will be developed at least through 2003.''
To me that suggests that there is no Linux void yet. Also, the fact that they say they will keep developing for those Unices but not for MS Windows suggests that perhaps they will Go Unix with this, which they can do thanks to Mac OS X's Unix roots (kudos to NeXT for coming up with this brilliant idea).
---
Economics is extremely useful as a form of employment for economists.
-- John Kenneth Galbraith
No Worries (Score:4, Interesting)
Or am I being ridiculously optimistic? Do I need to Think Different to understand Apple's financial decisions?
Re:No Worries (Score:4, Informative)
Unless I missed some big story in the last week or so...
Ahem...yes there IS quicktime for GNU/Linux (Score:2)
[ the following command shows packages available on a Gentoo source based installation. It is somewhat analogous to 'rpm -q -a |grep quicktime' on a Suse/Red Hat/Mandrake box, or 'dpkg -l |grep quicktime' on a Debian box]
# emerge -s quicktime
[ Results for search key : quicktime ]
[ Applications found : 2 ]
* media-libs/openquicktime
Latest version Available: 1.0
Latest version Installed: [ Not Installed ]
Homepage: http://openquicktime.sourceforge.net/
Description:
OpenQuicktime library for linux
* media-libs/quicktime4linux
Latest version Available: 1.5.5
Latest version Installed: 1.3
Homepage: http://heroinewarrior.com/quicktime.php3
Description:
quicktime library for linux
As you can see, there are at least two quicktime libraries available for GNU/Linux (mplayer will play quicktime videos, as will xine IIRC). In addition, codeweavers have a wine-based quicktime plugin project as well, so Linux support is covered pretty well.
Apple may not be bothered to produce a GNU/Linux version (hardly suprising since GNU/Linux relegated Apple to 3rd place ranking in PC OS marketshare), but free software developers are quietly going about supporting the format under GNU/Linux and *BSD, sans the usual press release fanfare that accompanies Microsoft and Apple products.
Re:No Worries (Score:1, Informative)
MacOS X - the unix for people who bathe daily.
Re:No Worries (Score:1)
Re:Some thoughts on Quicktime (Score:2)
Rayz, Chalice, and Shake are not editing programs. They're compositors. Big, big difference.
Nobody needs QuickTime for a compositor, except possibly to support reading and writing of image formats. And Shake, Chalice, and Rayz already have those problems solved.
(At this point, you may almost almost call Quicktime a full fledged operating system. The thing is such a beast that i have heard it said that Apple does not actually port Quicktime to Windows-- that instead, they wrote a limited Wine-like "emulation" layer translating all the parts of the Macintosh APIs that Quicktime uses into the equivilent parts of the Windows APIs)
Are you just making stuff up at this point, or what?
Re:Some thoughts on Quicktime (Score:2)
If you're talking about GUI elements, then I'm with you-- for QuickTime Player. But are you talking about the QuickTime library itself? I don't believe there's any Mac-specific code in there, at least that I know of.
Re:Some thoughts on Quicktime (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Some thoughts on Quicktime (Score:2, Informative)
Of course he means QuickTime 2, not Windows 2.0.
Nope, you've got it backwards. QuickTime on OS9 was an extension, which you could readily disable and remove, and as such no part of the standard MacOS toolbox relied upon it. (QT on OSX is a little more integrated but the historical separation remains, QT is built on top of the toolbox, not vice versa.)
QuickTime uses the Mac toolbox fairly heavily -- it's not about media compression, it's about time-based playback of media. Compressing and decompressing is just something you -sometimes- need to do as part of this. A lot of the code is getting it from the uncompressed format to the screen/speakers in a timely manner. It uses windows, threads, events, timers, component manager, resource manager, file manager, sound manager, just to name a few. As some other folks said, they basically ported a good chunk of the MacOS Toolbox to Windows to make it work.
I won't argue too much with that one. I should point out that one of the reasons they didn't port it was because as big as it might seem to some young'uns
They ported the Mac toolbox to Darwin first - aka Carbon. Then, and only then, they brought over QuickTime, building it on top of Carbon. You'd have to port a large part of Carbon to Linux. Mind you, it would be possible, but there probably isn't a large perceived ROI for the time involved.
I'm sure Apple wouldn't mind extending their media-player dominance to another consumer desktop platform, but Linux (and *BSD) are not consumer desktop platforms yet. When binary distributions become more feasible and the userbase grows, that's when you might see QT for Linux.
(former Apple engineer)
Re:Some thoughts on Quicktime (Score:5, Informative)
QuickTime 2 was the first version for Windows. It was playback only - authoring required a Mac. It wasn't really a port, just a player library that could do QT files.
QuickTime 3 for Windows was a ground-up new version that supported Authoring. Since QuickTime for Mac had huge dependcies on the underlying MacOS "Toolbox" for QT3 for Windows they actually ported over a huge portion of the MacOS APIs so it could run. It was complete enough that Apple had to specifically request software vendors not use QuickTime as a Mac to Windows porting library. And some still did, like Media Cleaner Pro 4.
QuickTime is a whole media architecture. It does compression, sure, but lots of other stuff. It is a major enabling technology for video editing, and also does panoramas, audio playback, etcetera. Its complexity is on the same order of magnitude as the Linux kernel.
Apple doesn't get any money from QuickTime licenseing. While you need to license the installer from them, it is free as in beer. You just need to send them two copies of your disc for regression testing against new versions of QT.
QuickTime for MacOS X is Carbon, which means it uses the port of the Mac toolbox for MacOS X (in the same way it uses is own internal port on Windows). Porting it to Linux would require porting this as well. This is far from trivial - QuickTime needs to talk directly to low level hardware like sound cards, clocks, video cards, etcetera. This aren't things that are well unified under Linux. QuickTime is extremely heavily tested by a large testing team. So even if they did it, they'd have to pick a few Linux flavors to test against. The kinds of things QuickTime does are the kinds of things that break on random distributions.
I've heard that the Windows port took something over 100 engineer years, and I imagine Linux would take at least as many. That's, VERY rough ballpark, $20M.
Think Apple could see an additional $20M in net revenue from having a Linux port?
Re:Some thoughts on Quicktime (Score:2)
But, if Apple opened it up and let the community do the port (I'm sure there's the will), it would cost them substantially less. If they only open up the playback side and leave the authoring closed and on the current platforms it would still benefit Linux and *BSD greatly.
With MacOS X (Darwin) being a flavor of FreeBSD they probably have a large proportion of the work required to make a *BSD/Linux port possible done already.
But, back in the real world, what would be their motive for taking such a move? With MacOS X, they already have a viable (unix like) platform for Quicktime and it works quite well (at least on my B&W G3 and iBook2), so the benefits for Apple of having QT support on Linux/*BSD would be low. Despite this point, I'd still love to have a native QT player on my Slackware desktop.
Re:Some thoughts on Quicktime (Score:2)
It is my personal theory that one of the big reasons we will not be seeing a linux version of quicktime is because
** Please note that the following is pure fact. **
There are only two reasons that you will not be seeing a Linux version of QuickTime.
A) No one has come up with a revenue model to justify Apple's investment in it. And with no significant portion of either production or consumption of video taking place on Linux desktops, I sincerely doubt anyone ever will.
B) No outside party has offered to provide Apple with the necessary investment. Apple would be more than happy to do so at anyone at all's request (well, the QuickTime team anyway, can't speak for top management but I doubt they'd be offside) it's just that the Red Hats etc. haven't put the dosh up.
END. OF. STORY.
Re:No Quicktime for Linux? (Score:2, Insightful)
Everyone would then be on an even playing field.
But...jeez...who has time to waste on Linux.
Its all about revenue (Score:2, Interesting)
Apples not going to cut of a revenue stream, so clearly they'll keep Windows / Linix / other versions. Its in their best interests to allow these acquisitions to generate revenue, if for no other reason than to mititgate acquisition costs.
Intermediate term, I wouldn't be surprised to see "enhanced" versions on OS X only, followed by a longer term retirement of Windows / Linux / other versions.
This way they entice folks over to their high margin platform (Mac), while not pissing them off and giving them adequate time to retire the older hardware gracefully.
Re:Its all about revenue (Score:1)
It is interesting to see Apple follow a "convert or be eaten" strategy. We expect this from Microsoft, but from Apple? Heck, at one time they were considering selling FileMaker!
All this high-end buying binges are nice and all, but I hope Apple puts more effort into "average joe" application, like giving their programmers time to work on Open Office (or bring out a professional version of Apple Works).
Will these be Apple-branded? (Score:4, Insightful)
At least that is my take.
Re:Will these be Apple-branded? (Score:1)
Re:Will these be Apple-branded? (Score:2)
Just MHO, YMMV.
windows? (Score:1)
Re:windows? (Score:1, Informative)
Re:windows? (Score:1)
Nick Brooks
Re:windows? (Score:2)
Oops. (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Oops. (Score:2)
They changed it before the show started :-)
Following in MS' footsteps (Score:2, Insightful)
Actually, this is cool for Apple, because years ago you could refute those who said Apple was the graphics platform by pointing out the lack of CGI and high end compositing software for the platform (Premiere isn't high end before someone says that), but it appears Apple is attempting to remedy it.
The real question is, how long after they force developers to poorly port things will they sell it to Avid? ;)
Re:Following in MS' footsteps (Score:1)
I hope Apple doesn't mak ethe same msitake..
Silicon Grail site F'd (Score:1)
I've never seen a
Apple's Digital editing Hi-end cabal (Score:5, Insightful)
They already have the best video editor in Final Cut Pro. Then they released Cinema Tools to help convert between film and video, easing the editing process for cinema features. Then came the Xserve, paving the way for the server / heavy workstation in the creative business. Now by combining the best of the two leading technologies in the high-end compositing market Apple can take over the entire movie business by simply being the best choice.
Sneaky, but I like it
apple isn't interested in linux... (Score:1)
Isn't this old news? (Score:1)
Discreet Will Fill The "Void" For Windows (Score:2)
http://www.discreet.com/
Don't foget Eyeon (Score:2)
RayZ did seem to do more stuff than the other programs, but I really can't speak about quality because I didn't use it for long enough.
RMN
~~~
Re:Don't forget Eyeon (Score:2)
#include "ShamelessPlug.h"
More info on Digital Fusion here: www.eyeonline.com [eyeonline.com]
Re:Discreet Will Fill The "Void" For Windows (Score:2)
Many pro apps on Windows! (Score:1)
Apple and shake (Score:1)
Platform independence
Shake will look and work identically on all operating systems. Plus, Shake licenses are always floating, which means that you can start Shake on any machine in your facility.
Now, that isn't to say which operating systems, but notice there is a plural there. And considering Apple didn't change this back in feb. when they bought Shake...
Interestingly enough (Score:5, Interesting)
Now, what this effectively does is make it so that the people who used to shell out big bucks for the software product now have two choices: find a new piece of software, or spend less money than they priviously wold have spent on an upgrade, and buy a powermac and the mac version of the software.
This is actually quite a brilliant strategy. Think of it this way: I use product x. Product x costs $20,000 and an upgrade costs $5,000. Product x is the core of my business. I use windows PCs to run product x. Now apple buys company x, who makes product x. Nothing changes for a few years. Product x's windows support is phased out, and the mac version's price is dropped to $2,000 for a new product, and $999 for an upgrade. I can now purchase a powermac for $5,000 and a product x upgrade to mac for $999 and end up spending only slightly more than I would have otherwise. Furthermore, in the future, upgrades will be very very cheap. Or, if I don't like apple, I can stop using product x, and instead use product y, which, since I never used it before, now costs $20,000, and has an entirely different interface...
See why Apple's strategy is smart?
Re:Interestingly enough (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:No, you wouldn't... (Score:2)
Meeting deadlines is important.
Nothing says a G4 cannot meet deadlines. Without Shake or Nothing Real, is there software available on the Mac that even allows you even consider Apple?
A 1GHz G4 vs a 1.6GHz AMD is *not* a hands down victory for the AMD any more than a 1.6GHz AMD vs a 2.4GHz P4 is a hands down victory for the P4; just on simple analysis, the G4 has a SIMD unit *twice* as wide as the AMD solution, and has 4 of these Altivec units to the Athlon's 3 3d!Now units.
So more than anything else, a G4 is memory starved, though the new XServes help a bit with their DDR chipset.
Just on a stupid upper limit, at the same clock a G4 can process over twice as much data, Altivec vs 3d!Now. If anything *both* of these processors are memory constrained.
So the G4 *already* keeps up with the AMD, and the AMD *already* keeps up with the P4, excepting the fact that there doesn't exist the software parity between the platforms... which Shake and RAYZ may help alleviate.
Yes, you have the advantage of experience in this arena, so I'm largely arguing *possibilities*, but the whole point of Apple buying Nothing Real and Silicon Grail is about possibilities and Apple's execution into reality.
Add on top of this that Apple does have Darwin->x86 render nodes, XServe render nodes, *and* G4 optimizations up their sleeves, and it's not as *hopeless* as you make it up to be...
Narrowing the choice helps no-one (Score:2)
> the Mac that even allows you even consider Apple?
Discreet Combustion and Pinnacle Commotion, for example, run on Macs. So does Shake (there was a Mac version before Apple bought Nothing Real). Do does After Effects (not high-end, but not as low-end as it used to be, either).
Making a Mac version of RayZ or any other program (or optimising an existing version) is a great thing. Competition drives prices down and quality up. But killing existing versions, especially the versions that run on the fastest, cheapest platforms (x86), only makes the software less competitive for existing users and less attractive to (potential) future users.
The rest of your points are valid, which is why I say: show me read-world benchmarks. Stop arguing about Altivec and SSE2 and x86-64 and compare software that exists, running on systems that exist.
For example, Pentium 4s are much faster than Athlons in Lightwave, but slower in 3D Studio MAX. So if you're going to be using Lightwave a lot, a Petnium 4 may be a better deal, even if it is more expensive than an Athlon. On the other hand, if you use MAX a lot, Athlons are probably a better deal.
So maybe in some applications a Mac is faster or cheaper than a PC. But the way to find that out is to compare both versions (and in most cases, they already exist). It's not to kill a product that a lot of people have bought and probably depend on. If you've just invested on 50 x86 Linux render nodes, how would it make you feel to hear that the program you use is going to become Mac-only...? Or even that Linux will continue to be supported, but all new versions are going to be Mac-only?
I've written this before: I can understand that Mac users feel happy because of some new program, or new optimisations (even if they don't use that specific program, some innovations might make their way into software they do use). But I cannot understand why they seem to feel so happy just because the other versions (Windows, Linux, Irix) are getting the axe.
RMN
~~~
Re:No, you wouldn't... (Score:2)
The G4 is slower than the Intel / AMD alternatives (see this test [digitalvideoediting.com], for example), and PCs are cheaper than Macs (especially if you run Linux and thus save the "Windows tax").
Once you're inside a compositing (or animation) program, the actual operating system isn't relevant. What matters is quality and speed. If a program exists for two platforms, then its quality will be the same. So it boils down to speed (or, more precisely, the price / speed ratio, because all these programs can be set up in render farms). So the platform that gives you more "bang for the buck" will inevitably win.
Now, Apple could gain market share by killing the competition, but there's no way they can kill all the competition. Discreet rules the high-end and there's no way Apple can buy them (Autodesk is far too big). So to be competitive, Apple must either sell very cheap render nodes (the Xserve could be a step in that direction) or come up with much faster hardware (wasn't the G5 supposed to be out yet?).
Unlike 99% of people writing in this thread, I actually do work in animation and post-production, so I have some clues as to what I'm talking about. Maybe that just doesn't fit in with
Will I go from "troll" to "insightful" if I say Bill Gates is the devil...? Personally, I think those posts should be modded as redundant. Everbody knows it already.
RMN
~~~
Re:No, you wouldn't... (Score:2, Interesting)
From an article located at creativemac.com [creativemac.com] (from the same publishers as digitalvideoediting.com):
Maybe that's why Apple made this purchase, so that they can become a source for compositing software that takes advantage the G4's attributes.Sorry, but your original message reads like a troll. It has little to do with the subject at hand, yet takes every opportunity to bash the overall subject matter of this category.
You can't test something that doesn't exist (Score:2)
You can only compare products that exist. After Effects is one of (if not the) most common compositing program in Windows and Mac platforms. The Dual G4 used in the test was the fastest Mac that existed at the time (it still is, I think). Also, both systems were similarly priced ($2564 for the PC, $2870 for the Mac). They even removed some of the PC's memory to make it match the G4.
It's about as fair as it gets. In fact, I think they should have used a faster PC (that did exist), even if it was a more expensive.
Now, I find it rather odd that Affter Effects (mady by Adobe, which is traditionally an Apple partner) is so poorly optimised for the Mac, and so well optimised for the PC. If this is the case, then people running AE on the Mac should probably drop Adobe a note.
Can you post a link to any other independent test (ie, not made by Apple or a PC manufacturer) where the same program is shown running on two top (PC & Mac) workstations? Say, Photoshop, 3D Studio MAX, Lightwave, Combustion, etc...?
That link you posted compares single G4s to dual G4s, but (strangely enough) not to dual Athlon MPs or Xeons.
And my message has everything to do with the subject. Selling cheap software my be important for the low-end market, but for the high-end (professional) market, what counts is deadlines. And that boils down to render speed. Why would anyone buy 50 G4 render nodes when they can get the same speed with 30 Athlon MPs or Xeons...? And if their budget is enough for 50 G4s, then they can probably buy 70 Athlons and finish the jobs even faster. Rendering faster doesn't just mean you can meet the deadlines; it often means you can do two versions of each project, and keep your clients happy.
RMN
~~~
If it isn't really using the Altivec... (Score:3, Interesting)
It's all in what you're using of the CPU.
Precisely (Score:2)
Who cares if an 8 MHz Motorola 68000 (that I have in my good ol' Atari ST) is faster than an 8 MHz Pentium 4? They don't make 2.5 GHz 68000s.
The G4 runs at 1 GHz. The Pentium 4 will soon be running at 3 GHz (currently at 2.53). Even if it's only half as fast per clock cycle, in the end it's still faster. You cand disqualify it on the basis that "it runs too fast and it's not fair".
It's not a matter of MHz; I don't care if a CPU runs at 1 MHz or at 10 GHz. It's a matter of how fast it gets the job done. And right now, the fastest Athlons and Pentiums get pretty much any job done faster than the fastest G4.
There are plenty of good reasons to buy a Mac. But raw speed is not one of them.
Will the G5 change that? Maybe. Personally, I doubt it, but competition is always a good thing.
RMN
~~~
Re:You can't test something that doesn't exist (Score:2)
>> GHz Pentium because the Athlon has a lower clock speed...?
> Nope. Never even implied that.
You said:
>> They tested software (After Effects) that does not take advantage
>> of dual processors on a dual G4 of slower individual processor speed.
How could they have tested it on a system of higher (or the same) processor speed (I presume you meant clock speed) if they don't make G4s any faster than 1 GHz...?
> Adobe hasn't been that helpful to Apple is quite a while.
Why should they be "helpful" to Apple when Apple has become one of their main competitors in Mac software?
It's up to Adobe's customers to pressure them to improve their software. If there's room for improvement, and if the clients let Adobe know that those improvements will increase their sales, Adobe will surely invest more time and money optimising their programs.
> The tests invariably come out the way the review wants them to.
Well, I've seen thousands of tests that pitch Pentiums against Athlons and ATI against NVidia and so on, and they all seem to agree on the results (within 10%). The article I linked to was a reasonably fair comparison between a Dual G4 and an Athlon MP workstion (although it wasn't the fastest Athlon available at the time, and although they halved the amount of RAM in the Athlon, and although the G4 was more epxensive).
But you say that test is no good because After Effects doesn't use the second G4 CPU properly (but do you know if it uses the second Athlon CPU properly?).
So I ask you: what program do you suggest one should use to compare both plaftorms? Lightwave? Combustion? Both are quite well optimised for SMP workstations, so they should be a good test, right?
I didn't find any data for Combustion, but here's a page with a ton of Lightwave benchmarks:
http://www.blanos.com/Benchmark/ [blanos.com]
> "Strangely enough"?? It was used to support my
> statement that the second processor is barely
> used by After Effects. It had nothing to do
> with other platforms.
Yes, but it's strange that in that article they say "After Effects runs slower on the G4 than on the Athlon because it's not properly optimised", and then they mention a series of programs that (they say) are optimised for the G4 and... don't compare them to the same programs on an Athlon (or Xeon). Don't you find that a bit strange...? How hard would it have been to run the Combustion benchmarks on a PC?
> Your message was nothing but an Apple-bashing.
No offence, but I really couldn't care less about Apple. I don't sell PCs or Macs, and I'll use whichever hardware and software get the job done better (be it PC, Mac, SGI, etc., and Linux, Irix, Windows, MacOS, etc.). Here's my original message again:
If you "do 3D" (or compositing) professionally you will be using the platform that lets you meet deadlines.
True or false? Does a frame rendered on a Mac look any different from the same frame rendered by the same program on a PC or SGI? If the resulting quality is the same, the difference boils down to speed.
And the G4 is definitely not it.
True or false? Aren't the fastest G4s slower than the fastest Xeons / Athlons? Try this with any program that runs on both platforms. The 1 GHz G4 may be able to keep up with a 1.7 GHz P4. But it cannot keep up with a P4 running at 2.5 GHz.
Unless the G5 manages to at least keep up with the Pentium 4 / Athlon / Hammer, Apple doesn't really stand much of a chance in the high-end.
The P4 is likely to scale up to 3 GHz until the end of the year. Athlons are likely to scale up to 2 GHz at least. AMD's new CPU (Hammer / Opteron) will be released early next year, and will work in up to 8-way SMP (that's eight CPUs in a single workstation). It will be rated at around 3400+ (about 1.5 times faster than the Athlon XP 2000+). Will a 1 GHz G4 be able to compete with these CPUs? I think not. Apple needs a fast G5.
If they continue to support Linux render nodes it's not because they like Linux, it's because that's the only way people will buy the (slower, more expensive) Apple workstations.
Who do people buy Linux render nodes? Because they're faster than the Windows versions? Not really (sometimes they are, but we're talking less than 5%). They buy them because they're cheaper. You only need to pay for the hardware; no "Microsoft tax". No-one is going to make a render farm of Macs. Even if they weren't slower than the x86 systems, it would simply be too expensive. If Apple killed the Linux versions, they wouldn't sell the software at all, except possibly to very small companies and home users. This way they manage to sell 3 or 4 Mac workstations plus 20 or 50 licenses for Linux render nodes.
Again: my message was on-topic and accurate. I work in the field, I know what I'm talking about. I don't care if you're sentimentally attached to Apple or Microsoft or Intel or AMD or SGI or Transmeta or Linux or whatever. That may influence home users, but it doesn't influence the high-end industry. It's all about "bang for the buck". And right now, bang for the buck means Athlons and Linux.
RMN
~~~
Re:No, you wouldn't... (Score:3, Interesting)
It actually depends. On code that takes advantage of Altivec, you can see dramatically faster performance on the Mac. For instance, we have custom code here running on a dual 800 Mhz Mac that blows the doors off of an Intel P4 at 2.2Ghz.
and PCs are cheaper than Macs (especially if you run Linux and thus save the "Windows tax").
Actually, check out the latest Gartner group study on the total cost of ownership between Macs and PC's. They found that Macs are about 36% cheaper to run than PC's. And as for the user tax, check out Apples new OSX Server Xserve. No user tax!
Speculation (Score:2)
But new code doesn't grow on trees. Someone has to write it. And even if there's someone around to write it (which often there isn't, especially in closed-source software), a lot of operations don't benefit the least bit from the Altivec, or SSE2, or 3DNow!, or MMX.
There's no point in speculating about code that doesn't exist and optimisations that cannot be made. Vector operations are useful in very specific situations, they're not a magic powder that you can sprinkle over any program to make it faster.
You can only compare things that actually exist, in their current form.
Intel wrote a Pentium 4 optimisation pack for 3D Studio MAX and it turned out that some of those optimisations also helped Athlon systems. But it did make the Pentium 4 more competitive (actually faster, in certain operations). And that's a healthy attitude: show what you product can do and take on the competition. AMD is free to do the same thing, but they probably won't (at least until the Hammer is released).
But Apple's attitude is simply to kill the other versions so they have no competition (and naturally this gives them even less incentive to improve the Mac version). I can see what's in it for Apple (just as I can understand why Microsoft behaves the way it does), but I definitely can't see what's in it for the end users.
Anyway, as I wrote before, I don't use RayZ, (I'm a Discreet / Eyeon kind of guy) so this doesn't really bother me. I just wish Apple would give Intel and AMD a run for their money in the hardware side of things instead of going "the Microsoft Way". Even if they didn't manage to be faster, at least they'd drive prices down.
> Actually, check out the latest Gartner group study on the total cost of
> ownership between Macs and PC's. They found that Macs are about
> 36% cheaper to run than PC's.
Do you have a link to that?
RMN
~~~
Re:Speculation (Score:2)
And Microsoft has not done this for years?!!?!? Come on, this is exactly how they solidified many of their markets. The other thing Microsoft did was absolutely kill projects that did not fit into the Windows paradigm. At least Apple chooses companies with technologies they can implement and the technology does not get killed. Rather it is integrated into the OSX product. Additionally, Apple has been very good about listening to their end users. They actually fix bugs and improve on features as opposed to Microsoft.
Do you have a link to that?
It came in a little mailing the other day (paper mail), but I am sure that you can find it with a little web searching. Try the Mac centric sites such as www.macsurfer.com
Re:Speculation (Score:2)
Just because I say I understand why Microsoft behaves the way it does, that doesn't mean I agree with Microsoft's way of doing business.
But if Apple (or IBM, or Intel, or whoever) behave the same way, I will also dislike it. It's not who does it, it's what they do and how they do it.
RMN
~~~
Re:No, you wouldn't... (Score:2)
I don't think you understand... (Score:2)
What's important is not rendering a sequence in half the time. It's having enough time to render two slightly different sequences, and picking the one that works best.
So I have no doubt that with a system that's five times as fast, ILM artists will do a better job. Perhaps not five times better (how do you measure quality anyway?), but definitely better.
Nothing is ever finished until the deadline. But on a slow system, it's not finished because it's not finished. On a fast system, it's not finished because you still have time to improve it.
RMN
~~~
Re:I don't think you understand... (Score:2)
Not so much Intel... (Score:3, Interesting)
The Athlon's FPU is much, much faster than the P4's.
And optimising for SSE2 or Altivec will only take you so far. 3D Studio MAX has recently been optimised for the Pentium 4 (by Intel programmers) and it still runs faster on Athlons. Some algorithms are simply not suited to vector optimisations.
Apple may be moving to DDR266, but x86 platforms are moving to DDR333 and DDR400. And the Athlon also benefits a lot from faster memory (the P4 has RAMBUS, wich is even faster). Anyway, 3D rendering for example doesn't depend too much on memory performance; it depends on pure FPU power.
If the Xserve was cheaper and / or faster, I could see it as an alternative to dual Athlons / Xeons. I guess it'll depend on the performance of the G5 and how it compares to the x86 alternatives (the Hammer seems to be coming along nicely, and the P4 can probably be pushed up to 3 / 4 GHz during the next 12 months).
RMN
~~~
Not really DDR as the x86 folks know it ... (Score:2)
Well, sort of. The system memory is DDR, for sure, but the connection between the "northbridge" (or whatever Apple calls it) and the processors is still shared 1.06Gb/s PC/133. Ouch! So the Xserve isn't going to be any less memory starved than the current Quicksilver Powermacs, although anything DMA would be better.
And the jury's still out on whether the G4 is really memory starved, anyway. Sure, getting a fatter pipe to the Altivec would be huge, but only for code that can reasonably be rewritten to take advantage of it, and, while certainly there might be big wins in there, it's
Anyway. I'm waiting for MWNY, to see if Motorola can roll out a DDR capable G4. Or, in my wildest dreams, a DDR TiBook
Best,
'jfb
Re:Not really DDR as the x86 folks know it ... (Score:2)
'jfb
Where's the profit? (Score:2)
How would they hope to make enough profit on this arrangement to get their money back? There just aren't enough people doing compositing out there to do it for marketshare alone.
Now, if they were to buy up 3D companies, THAT market is a lot bigger...
Yes, but why compositing companies? (Score:5, Insightful)
What's the killer application for automated background separation? Video-conferencing, of course, or what Apple might call iTalk. Video-conferencing has not been well received, largely because of bandwidth problems. MPEG-4 gives you really nice full-frame compression, but add in the automated layer separation, and it gets way better. It might even be good enough to do on a GSM phone. Cable modems are definitely more than good enough.
So, who has the technology for separating people from their backgrounds? Hollywood, of course - that's what they use for putting live actors into special effects. Who's considered the best by Hollywood? Nothing Real and Silicon Grail, of course.
So, Apple builds this into the January version of OSX and shows an ad with the couple who got married in Hawaii last year; they've got a kid now, and Grandma gets to watch him take his first steps live because she's got an iMac that's on the cable modem 24/7. Digital lifestyle.
I expect the QuickTime team are the guys waving the landing lights for the Nothing Real and Silicon Grail tech. Even if I'm wrong about the application, there's no better place in Apple to absorb the technology.
There's probably more going on here besides just beefing up up Final Cut Pro.
Holy Cow! Marketing Opportunity (Score:3, Interesting)
Jon and Jen use Final Cut Pro and DVD Studio to make their DVDs for clients. They use MPEG4 to stream content using an approach like you outlined here. Then the couple's kid uses iMovie to make presentations for her class project.
Not as obnoxious as Dell's Steven, you identify with real users and can target specific markets for ads. Heck, you could even have XServe in there somewhere.
I'd prefer replies to Karma. I have plenty of Karma.
Re:Holy Cow! Marketing Opportunity (Score:3, Funny)
Jon and Jen use Final Cut Pro and DVD Studio to make their DVDs for clients. They use MPEG4 to stream content using an approach like you outlined here. Then the couple's kid uses iMovie to make presentations for her class project.
And then they can make a few amateur pornos and sell them to put the kid through college...
Eric
Pure fantasy (Score:2)
"Separating people from their backgrounds" is called "keying". Shake has no keying technology of its own, they licenced Primatte from Photron. I don't recall what RAYZ/Chalice used, but certainly keying was not the focus of that product.
If they wanted keying technology, they'd buy Photron [photron.com] themselves, or Ultimatte [ultimatte.com] or Zbig [slick-fx.com] (too late) or maybe even a compositor with its own keyer [eyeonline.com].
The details are not the main conjecture (Score:2)
You make a fair point, but the ownership of the keying technology does not significantly change the probability of this outcome. It may even make more sense, since QuickTime is primarily an output platform - they might decide to do the keying in a hardware device (camera) with guts similar to an iPod.
Seeing as the aquired companies had existing contracts with the keying companies your mentioned, and Apple bought them, the contracts should carry over. If the contracts were sufficiently elastic it may not make sense for Apple buy them. If they were not good enough, your list may make a good candidate list for future aquisitions. I'll check back when they announce next-quarter's acquisition.
(being June 13th, this probably also signals that Apple will show a nice profit for the 2nd quarter, such that they can afford an aquisition).
Not useful for videoconferencing either (Score:3, Interesting)
Keying is another matter. It's quite difficult to do good keying, even when the background is a nice, uniform, unique shade of colour, which it never is. You have noise, transparency, fringing and spillover to deal with. That's why Ultimatte etc devote their whole companies to the subject. Buying keying technology makes more sense, but you wouldn't pay many millions of dollars to buy a company that just licenced a keyer, you'd licence the keyer yourself, or you'd buy the keying company.
But to separate talent from background when there's no blue or green screen behind them is much harder still. You can do a difference key, if the background is completely still, but the results usually need manual cleanup. Otherwise, you have to rotoscope each frame - "cut out" the talent from the background by hand. It takes ages, but it's often the only way. Shake, Chalice, Digital Fusion etc, are good for doing this, but they don't do it for you, not by a long shot.
The "digital lifestyle" you describe has no relationship to this article. Not unless you want Granny to paint her computer room blue & build one of these [ultimatte.com] into her iPod-camera, or hire a team of high-speed rotoscopers.
Re:Not useful for videoconferencing either (Score:2)
If you want transparency in the FG, you need an alpha channel. If you don't have one, you make one by keying or rotoscoping, or some other technique. That's all there is to it.
If you're panning/scaling/rotating the foreground, it does take more than a paragraph of source to get good subpixel precision (i.e. antia-aliased). Maybe a page. It's still not hard.
Re:Pure fantasy (Score:2)
DFusion's keyer is quite good, although I often get lost in the middle of all those sliders.
RMN
~~~
Re:Yes, but why compositing companies? (Score:2)
Support for non-ISMA profiles, or later ISMA profiles, might be coming in QT7, eventually.
I wonder if apple knows... (Score:2)
Of course, the guy three cubes over who is porting other bits of Cineon code to Linux would probably be out of a job if that happened, so I hope it doesn't happen.
How do you know? (Score:2)
Apple did NOT buy Silicon Grail... (Score:2)
"Apple has acquired technologies from Silicon Grail"
They don't list the technologies, but they do include RAYZ and Chalice. They don't mention the Cineon technology.
Silicon Grail is now an empty company. What's Ray going to do next? And what does happen to the Cineon stuff?
Are you sure? (Score:2)
Re:Are you sure? (Score:3, Funny)
Hi, I'm Steve and I bought two companies... (Score:5, Funny)
Now everyone is going "ooooo, what does that mean for the rest of us"? Meanwhile, my ex-friend Bill, buys up companies left and right and there is barely a ripple in the Linux and Apple community. So why do I seem more threatening?
Personally, I think it is my turtle-necks. See, I learned from Grace Slick that nothing hides the look of age than a turtle-neck. Especially black because it a) looks cool b) hides that extra "executive weight". But it threatens people that I can look cool AND youngish at the same time. Bill looks like someone's Grandfather - or Mr. Burns from the "Simpsons". "Smithers, buy up Freedonia" - see how that would just seem natural coming out of his mouth?
But I buy two companies and BOOM I'm killing babies and eating their entrails.
My point is that first, Apple is a business and as a business it attempts to stay in the black, much like my turtlenecks. Second, get a grip. Mergers happen all the time. Some are good and some are bad. Third, I'm still cool, right?
Your Pal,
Steve
Alternates... (Score:2)
Lets see...windows...how about Combustion?
and Linux.....the stuff put out by Alias|Wavefront (cant remember the name right now)
Re:Alternates... (Score:2)
Alias|Wavefront had their Composer product for Irix, but that also died a few years ago.
However, there's still Digital Fusion [eyeonline.com] by eyeon Software, at least on Windows. A Linux render node is on the way.
Actually, the primary use of Linux by studios is for render farms (both 3D and 2D). It makes a lot of sense there. But very few studios in my experience use Linux as a primary compositing platform - they use Windows & Irix primarily, with some use of After Effects on the Apple side for motion graphics.
Clearly, Apple wants to expand this particular market.
Wait a mintue (Score:3, Funny)
But I thought they bought that company in February what does it mean they purchased nothing? Oh wait the name of the company was Nothing Real? Ohh!
Basically doing a Microsoft (Score:2)
I predict they will do this with Maya as well, and if things go well, possibly Softimage.
This is a good insurance policy for them to stay alive. They have a similar position in the DTP market but eventually Quark is going to go the way of the dinosaurs and the market will be up for grabs. Most Adobe and Macromedia products are written for better integration on Windows these days with the Apple ports lacking somewhat in pollish. Apple should do more to ensure that it's niche in DTP is renewed as well.
Re:Basically doing a Microsoft (Score:2)
>>I predict they will do this with Maya as well, >>and if things go well, possibly Softimage.
I predict you're wrong.
First, 'MAYA' is not a company. It's put out by Alias|Wavefront. And A|W is not standalone.... it's part of SGI. SGI has made it quite clear they have no intention of selling A|W.... it's one of the few parts of SGI that isn't dying.
Second, 'SOFTIMAGE' is not a company. It is part of AVID. And the LAST thing AVID would do would be to give that up SOFTIMAGE. SoftXSI is selling very well, and DS is the only HDTV real time editing system that AVID has.
Apple may want to buy these, but they aren't selling. To do so would be suicide.
It's a stand-off (Score:2)
Steve: Bill, we're really concerned that Microsoft continue development of Office on the Mac.
Bill: (feeling a little bit more of that monopolistic power slip away) DOH!
--Rick
Apple has a single market - the end is near!!!! (Score:2)
I know i didn't just read that.
The idea that Apple would work to assume control of a imperceptably tiny market like this is hardly something to warrant such a whiny question as the poster made.
With the power of 5 black holes crunched together, MS wields the controls of every computer market from the desktop OS, to fscking two button mice. And with a large number of
Apple creeping into a market even farther that they pretty much already 0wwn j00 (and no one cares), this is not the end of the world..
this is the beginning for a major shift of a microsocopic percentage of people who claim already less than 5% of the market.
And the funny part is that, it will end up saving those users money in the long run. [macworld.co.uk]
Waaah.
Owning Hollywood (Score:2, Interesting)
Okay, not all of Hollywood and not just Hollywood but you get the idea.
Apple has the editing and they've just bought the compositing. What's left? Well, there's 3D. There has been talk of Apple buying Alias|Wavefront. What about NewTek to get LightWave?
Don't forget that Pixar has RenderMan. Pixar used to want to get out of the software business. What about selling RenderMan to Apple?
What about spinning all that stuff (editing, compositing, 3D, RenderMan) into it's own company, like Apple did with FileMaker? That way Apple can make sure the Mac is very well supported and the company can continue to support other platforms such as Linux (witness FileMaker on Windows)?
Wild speculation, of course, but that is the funnest kind!
I thought they already had the silicon grail (Score:2)
Re:We are the knights .... (Score:1, Offtopic)
The Wild Eep was one of the default alert sounds for GENERATIONS. I can't understand why Apple doesn't include it anymore.
Re:We are the knights .... (Score:1, Offtopic)
Ah, but you know you're a veteran Mac user if you can remember "Clink-Clank"!
Re:It's the technology stupid! (Score:2)
> My guess is that Stevie is after two things...
>
> 1 - kudos for having snazzy companies that do
> 'cool things' and can do it on a Mac,
>
> 2 - the technology in the companies (the main
> reason), to integrate them into existing Apple
> products especially Final Cut Pro. eg: the
> Cinespeed code that Silicon Grail got from
> Kodak.
With #2 you are getting close. Let's look at what Apple has put together and/or invented themselves:
QuickTime
Digital Video with Firewire
A field video workstation: Ti Powerbook
A pro video/graphics workstation: G4 Power Macs
A high end video workstation/cluster server: XServe
OS X: child of Mac and NeXT, grandchild and heir to the name of UNIX
Final Cut Pro
Cinema Tools for Final Cut Pro
DVD Studio
Shake
"technologies" purchased from Silicon Grail
a CEO with experience from running Pixar
Also available for the Mac from 3rd parties:
Photoshop and other high end graphics software
The big names in 3D in Hollywood: Maya and LightWave
Get the picture yet? Apple plans on taking Hollywood by storm. Avid had better start thinking about how low their prices can go because next to them, Apple complete with hardware is a fraction of the cost.
How does this benefit us ordinary folks? Plenty. The New Apple dances to Mothra's songs. The more the movie and music industries come to depend on Apple, the louder Steve Jobs will preach, and the more they will listen. And what Steve Jobs is preaching is an end to the insanity the MPAA and RIAA are currently practicing. What? You thought Sony and Universal just decided to market burnable songs on the internet out of the blue? Or is it because of Jobs' speech at the Grammys?
The fate of Linux in Shake and the others probably depends on three things:
1) how well XServe does in the marketplace
2) how well Shake et al for Linux sell from now thru 2003
2) how fondly attached present customers of Shake et al are to Linux
So if you want to see Linux for these products in 2004 and you are a current or prospective customer, let Apple know now.
For those of you who want full QuickTime for Linux, work on your desktop marketshare and see if "Uncle" IBM will lend you the millions neccessary to license the codecs. Maybe then if you ask nicely, Apple will do a version for you. Lots of downloads of the QT streaming server for Linux would help convince Apple of your interest.
"Mothra's attack is working."
-- Shouta, "Mothra 3: King Ghidora Attacks"
Re:reasons for this (Score:2)
With Shake gone...... well if you want to work in compositing u need to start evaluting Discreet, or budget for some fruit colored plastic computers.
Re:reasons for this (Score:2)
The non-Apple compositing market is far from empty, even when you consider only sub-$50k products. I can think of at least 4, including our own Digital Fusion [eyeonline.com].
Re:Keep dreaming (Score:2)
For very large sequences of operations, scan-line rendering is considerably faster and require many orders of magnitude less memory. There is no way to avoid it. Any compositor not designed to work this way will be limitied to a small number of operations before the image must be written back to disk.
From experiments with Rayz it seemed to be scan-line oriented just like Shake and Nuke.
Evil? Bah, go pee on Microsoft's campus (Score:2)
The real question is why you think Apple is doing something wrong?
Point by point:
It seems that Apple is positioning itself for a monopoly.
Having a monopoly isn't wrong, it's abusing the monopoly and hurting the market that's wrong.
I say this because they are trying to gain an unfair advantage over their competitors...
What's an unfair advantage? You mean they are trying to gain an advantage over their competitors?
by making it so that if people want to use compositing software then they also have to buy a Mac.
Why is that an advantage over their competitors? If the competitor runs on 5 flavors of hardware and Shake and RAYZ only run on four (Mac OS X, Linux, IRIX, and Windows), you think Apple has the advantage?
To make my point: Apple's track record with iDVD, iMovie, FCP, and DVD Studio is to buy a product, make a consumable version, lower the price of the product, and polish the product until it glows.
So the 'advantage' Apple gains over the competition:
More refined product.
Easier to use product.
Cheaper to own and purchase and use product.
Disadvantages? It only runs on Mac OS X.
If Apple stays true to form, we'll see the price drop. This is bad? We'll see better integration and performance. This is bad? We'll see increased usability. This is bad?
If, through the actions of Apple, the consumers *win*, what is Apple doing wrong?
Re:It's the people stupid! (Score:2)